I always try to remember to confirm a passenger’s destination before pulling away from the curb. When a girl climbed into the car a few days ago, I said the name of the street she was going to.
“Yep,” she said, putting on her seat belt. Then, I confirmed the town, really as an afterthought. I don’t always do that. Usually the street is enough. The town she had selected as her destination was about twenty minutes away.
“What?” she exclaimed. I repeated the name of the town she had listed.
“No!” she said. “Is that the destination I put into the app?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Where do you want to go?”
“Same street, but right here, in this town,” she said. I laughed.
“Good thing we got that ironed out. What would you have thought if I started driving you out into the country, in the complete wrong direction?”
It struck us both funny and soon we were cracking up.
“You probably would have thought I was taking you out there to kill you,” I joked.
“Yeah!” she said, giggling. “And I probably would have kicked open the door and jumped out while the car was moving!”
“And I would have thought, ‘What is wrong with this passenger?’”
By then we were laughing so hard we were almost crying. I pulled up to her stop, about five blocks away. It took all of three minutes to get there. I finally managed to stop laughing, and I sighed.
“Wow, that was great. Have a good day.”
“Thanks for not killing me!” she said.
“No problem,” I said. “Thanks for not jumping out of a moving vehicle.”
It’s the little things.